Together always (20 page)

He closed his eyes. He could live with anything but the possibility of her being hurt because of him. Anything. Lily had to be safe. Which meant she had to stay away from him. As long as she was close to him, she was vulnerable.

He'd been a fool to think it could be otherwise. Even without a killer after him, he couldn't bring her anything but hurt. That was all he'd ever brought to the people he loved. His mother, Mike, Lily. He'd caused them all pain.

Trace pushed open the front door and stepped into the warm hallway. Lily was in the kitchen. He could hear her

humming to herself and the sound of running water. John would still be at the store so they'd have the house to themselves. He left his jacket on as he pushed the door shut behind him. He didn't plan on staying long.

The sound of the door brought Lily into the hall. Trace looked at her, wondering how it was possible for one person to hold so much beauty.

**Hi. You're home early, aren't you?" He felt her smile go through him as if it carried a sharp edge. She looked so happy, and what he was about to do was going to wipe that look from her eyes.

**I... ah... had some things to do."

"Well, it's nice to have you home a little early." She crossed the hall with quick light steps and set her hand on his arm. "John won't be home for a couple of hours. Why don't you take off your coat and act like you're going to stay awhile?"

She tilted her head back, the look in her eyes pure invitation. Trace wanted to put his arms around her and hold her close. He wanted to feel her arms around him. He wanted a lot of things he couldn't have. He dragged his eyes from her face, moving away so that her hand dropped from his arm.

"As a matter of fact, I'm not going to be staying long."

"You're not? Are you going back to work?"

"No." Tell her about Mike. Tell her you were the one who should have died. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. She'd find out sooner or later but he couldn't be the one to tell her. He couldn't stand to see the look in her eyes when she realized it was his fault Mike was dead. She probably wouldn't blame him for it but it would change the way she looked at him.

And if she doesn't blame you? If she doesn't look at you any differently? That was no good, either. Then she'd worry

about him being in danger and she'd want to be with him. She could be hurt and he couldn't live with that.

"Trace?" Lily's questioning tone made him realize that he'd let the silence stretch a long time. He refocused his gaze on her. "Is something wrong? Why aren't you going to be home tonight?"

"I'm moving back into my apartment. I thought I'd pack up a few things and go on over tonight."

"You're doing what?" Shock drove the lingering invitation from her eyes.

"I'm just going to get a few of my things and take them back to my apartment." He couldn't stand the hurt that was filling her eyes and he looked away. "I'll go pack." He took the stairs two at a time, feeling like someone who'd just stolen Christmas from a child.

He had his duffel bag on the bed and was throwing clothing into it more or less at random when Lily came to the door. He saw her out of the corner of his eye but he refused to look at her, instead tossing another handful of shirts into the bag. She watched for a long moment without saying anything, and when she did speak it was to ask a painfully simple question—one he couldn't answer, at least not with the truth.

"Why?"

Trace's fingers clenched over the bundle of socks he'd picked up. He felt her pain as deeply as if it were his own. He wanted to hold her and soothe her hurt but he couldn't do that. Not and keep her safe, too. Her safety had to come first. She'd get over the hurt. In the long run, she'd thank him for it.

"Why what?" He made his response deliberately obtuse.

"Why are you doing this?"

"I've been here quite a while, Lily. You've settled in okay. John is here. You don't need me anymore."

**ril always need you/' The simple statement caught at him, sinking into his soul, bringing both pain and comfort.

"Well, rU be around. It's not like I'm moving to another state. I'm only fifteen minutes away." He stuffed the socks into a comer of the duffel bag and glanced around the room blindly, looking at anything but her.

**Why are you doing this now? Why now?"

'^Whynotnow?"

**What about last night?" The quiet question held a wealth of pain. Trace had his back to her and he shut his eyes for a moment before turning to look at her, his expression as blank as he could manage.

'*What about last night?"

Lily sucked in a quick breath, her eyes reflecting the hurt he'd inflicted. She knew it had been deliberate. It wasn't possible that it hadn't been deliberate. And the knowledge that he'd deliberately hurt her caused more pain than anything he said.

*'Are you going to tell me it didn't mean anything to you?" Her voice shook despite her best efforts to steady it.

**Of course not. It meant a lot to me. You mean a lot to me. You always have." His tone was absent and he looked around the room as if making sure he hadn't left anything important.

*'Trace, this doesn't make sense. Are you mad at me for some reason? Is there something I've done?"

**Of course not." He zipped the duffel bag with a quick movement. He had to get out of here before he broke down and told her everything, including just how much she meant to him. "I'm not mad at you. It's just time for me to move home again. I've been paying rent on the place and not getting any use out of it."

"Don't give me that! There's more to it than that. Last night I told you I loved you."

**I love you, too, Lily/' The words came from deep in his heart but his tone sounded like someone soothing a fractious three-year-old, offering a lollipop to prevent a tantrum.

Lily flushed, anger and hurt warring in her face. He wanted the anger to win. If she was angry with him, it would hurt her less.

*'You're just going to walk out? Just like that?*'

"I'm not walking out. You make it sound like Vm abandoning you or something," he chided. "Fm just moving back into my own apartment. Like I said, Vm not far away. We'll still see each other."

"Sure. Let's do lunch sometime." Her tone crackled with anger and Trace felt a vague relief. He could handle her anger far better than he could handle that hurt look in her eyes.

"I'll have my people contact your people." His weak joke was delivered to the empty doorway as Lily spun on one heel and walked away. There was a distinct click as the door to her room closed. Trace picked up the bag and slung it over his shoulder. He hesitated in the hallway. Lily's door beckoned to him. She was hurt. When the anger eased, the hurt was going to rise to the surface and he wasn't going to be here to comfort her.

He gritted his teeth and strode down the stairs, shutting the door behind him without looking back. Sometimes you had to be cruel to be kind. The old cliche echoed hollowly in his mind as he threw the duffel bag into the passenger seat. The 'Vette roared to life and he threw it into gear almost before the engine had a chance to catch. The car jerked, the tires grabbing the pavement as he backed into the road and slammed it into first. The sedate pace he assumed did not reflect the turmoil he felt.

He was heading toward an empty apartment and leaving behind the only home he'd ever known and the one person

in the world who meant something to him. But he was doing the right thing. It was hollow cxDmfort at best.

John pushed the door shut behind him and stretched. He'd never have guessed that running a liquor store could be so tiring. It wasn't the physical labor involved. He'd done a lot worse than sling around a few boxes of liquor. It was dealing with people all the time that exhausted him. It made him realize what a loner he'd become.

He dropped his jacket over the stair railing and walked into the kitchen. Lily was standing at the stove, stirring a steaming pot. She hadn't heard him come in and he watched her for a moment, reading her mood in the slump of her shoulders.

**Hi. What are you cooking?"

She jumped at the sound of his voice. Her back straightened and he could see her gathering herself together before she turned to look at him.

'*Hi. I was just throwing together a tuna casserole. Nothing fancy."

*'Sounds great." He opened the refrigerated and took out a beer, twisting the top off before turning to her again. What had happened to put that look in her eyes? "Something wrong?"

"Nothing." Her mouth edged up in a false smile before she turned away and stirred the noodles again. He'd seen a chef pay less attention to a hollandaise sauce.

He took a long swallow of beer and studied her again. In the weeks he'd known her, he'd learned that Lily was one of the most even-tempered women he'd ever met. She took life calmly, seeming almost to view it from a distance, letting a lot of it flow around her rather than wading right through the middle of it. Except when it came to Trace. When it came to him, her emotions were right on the surface.

"Where's Trace?" The spoon clattered to the stove top, telling him that his guess was right on the money. There was a long silence.

'*He moved back to his apartment." Not even all her self-control could keep the lost note from her voice. *'He left this afternoon."

John didn't say anything. When he'd left them alone last night, he'd hoped that maybe they'd work things out between them. He wasn't sure just what their problem was, though he had a few guesses, but he'd figured some time alone just might help them. So much for his figuring.

''What happened?"

*'Happened? What do you mean? Nothing happened. He just felt that it was time he moved back into his own place." She snatched up a can of tuna and attacked it with the can opener. "By the way, he told me about you being the one who picked us up all those years ago. Why didn't you mention it before? It's a pretty incredible coincidence, don't you think?"

"Moderately. I knew if you came to Dad he'd help you. We may have had our problems but he never turned away a kid who needed help."

"Just what kind of problems did the two of you have? You've never said anything and Mike didn't talk about it much." The question was a measure of her desperation to keep the subject away from Trace. She seemed to realize that she was prying and she looked up, her face flushed. "I'm sorry. That's really none of my business."

John shrugged, unoffended. "I don't mind. You met Dad after he'd mellowed quite a bit. When I was a kid, he was quite a martinet. Not exactly harsh, but rules were rules and God help you if you broke them. My mother was just the opposite. She belonged to the school that felt that a child should be left to grow in whatever direction seemed natural."

He took a swallow of beer, his expression thoughtful. *'Naturally they had more than a few arguments about it. And naturally I liked Mom's ideas considerably better than Dad's. What kid wouldn't? I resented what I saw as his attempts to control me and he fought all the harder. We both went a little too far.

*'When my mother was killed, I didn't deal with it real well. If there's a good age to lose your mother, sixteen isn't it. I know Dad must have grieved but I didn't beheve it at the time. I felt that since they'd fought so much, he must not have loved her. Actually, they argued about everything under the sun. I don't think they were very well suited. When I got older, I realized that they stayed together because of me more than anything else.

"Anyway, we grew even further apart. He wanted me to go to college and I thought it was a waste of time. To spite him, I joined the marines and shipped out to Vietnam. We never spoke again. The rest, as they say, is history."

He finished off the beer and tossed the bottle in the trash before looking at Lily. She was watching him with those eyes that always seemed far too old.

**When I was little, I used to dream about being part of a real family. My parents traveled so much, I hardly knew them. When they were killed, it didn't have much impact on me. Then I went to live with Trace and his mother and stepfather. It wasn't a happy home. It wasn't the way I'd pictured a real family at all. But it didn't really matter because I had Trace and I didn't need any more family than him. He took care of me and protected me and that was enough.

"You had the family I always thought I wanted, but I think, in some ways, maybe I had more than you did."

John stared at her, struck by the truth in her words. He'd never felt part of a family, never really felt part of anyone. There'd been a woman once but she'd died before he could find out just what they might have had. All his life he'd

walked more or less alone. Maybe that was what he'd seen in Trace and Lily all those years ago. There'd been a bond between them even then.

"Maybe you did at that." He leaned back against the counter and watched her stir the tuna, noodles and peas together before adding a can of mushroom soup. He waited until she'd slid the casserole in the oven before speaking again.

''You want to tell me what's going on with you and Trace?"

She rinsed her hands and wiped them on a towel, her expression guarded. *T'm not sure I know what you mean."

'Til explain. It's obvious to any idiot that the two of you are in love. Hell, even when you were kids, it was obvious that there was a special kind of bond between you. So why aren't you engaged or married or living together or something?"

Lily bit her lower lip, her eyes filling with tears that were blinked back before they could fall. "Don't ask me. Ask that pigheaded creep who packed his things and walked out of here today.''

"You want to talk about it?"

"No... Yes... I don't know." A smile flickered wanly. "Nothing like being decisive, huh?" She twisted the towel in her hands, looking down at the aimless movement.

"I've always known I loved Trace. When I was little, he was my knight in shining armor, always there to protect me and keep me safe. As I got older, my feelings changed and I began to love him in a different way. I think Trace's feelings changed the same way. Only he won't admit it. He keeps acting like loving him is the worst thing I could do, like he's bad for me or something."